Seasons
by Seraphix
Summary: Deidara hated Winter. [DeiTobi, slash]


Deidara hated Winter.

* * *

_Spring was lovely. The manner in which clean, white snow melted and turned to grey sludge before changing to clear water was Mother Nature's way of cleaning her color palette and preparing her canvas for the subtle art that was to come next. Leaves dotted the empty canvas of Spring with shades of unfurling green, while every other color of the spectrum appeared in the form of flower buds, which to some might appear pale and seemingly insignificant, that shook and shivered in Spring's cold breath. All this time, the icy backdrop was still present as the protagonist of the painting. For Deidara, Spring was a time of new beginnings, where the newcomers had to fit into to those who had already existed and left footprints in the hardened clay underneath the melting snow._

Deidara sat alone in the double room that he once shared with Sasori-danna and stared glumly at the empty bed at the opposite end of the room. It wasn't that he missed Sasori-danna, or well, maybe just a little bit. It was the worry that his new roommate would be a plebeian and not appreciate the fine art that he and Sasori-danna had been into. The prospect of an idiotic country bumpkin who could not be engaged in a proper conversation on the finer points of Dali for a roommate was an extremely depressing one.

The door to the room was thrown open with a bang, jolting Deidara from his thoughts. The character that came in was dressed in black track pants, had an Akatsuki coat tossed over one shoulder and a stack of boxes that missed the upper frame of the door by barely half an inch. The stack of boxes shuffled to about a foot in front of where he sat, and as he stared up at the stack half in bemusement and half in horror, a hand reach around from the boxes and a muffled voice spoke enthusiastically.

"Hello Deidara sempai! Tobi is…"

What Tobi thought himself to be was never known to Deidara for the stack of boxes chose that moment to lose whatever precarious balance that Tobi had used to carry them and came crashing down on the two.

Just before a particularly heavy box knocked Deidara out cold for the rest of the day, he saw a sight that made him cringe in terror.

Oh god. ORANGE! A plebeian for sure…

* * *

_Summer was the masterpiece of Spring. Flowers propelled themselves into full bloom, allowing leaves to be their escorts to the Summer ball, a riot of colors ready to make love to the world. The soil itself came to life, and life came to the soil with the animals waking up good and proper, the birds singing bursts of courtship as they danced the primal choreography of Mother Nature. Deidara found the dance amusing to watch, and occasionally halted or intercepted some with an explosion, but otherwise, allowed things to run their course and formulated his art around them._

Tobi blended bit by bit into the canvas of Deidara's life. The plebian orange mask of his became part of the room's fixtures as much as Deidara's little non-explosive clay figurines were. Where Deidara's bright blonde hair was once the only glimmer of cheeriness in the room, Tobi's mannerisms invaded and seeped into the dust gathering cracks between the floorboards, and the little nooks and crannies of the furniture present, resulting in the room being as sunny and cheerful as him.

Disgusting, Deidara would say. But he still got use to the change in the room quickly enough. One learnt to appreciate the little things in life when you were a missing nin and part of an association like the Akatsuki, and that included getting use to and even liking the cheerfulness of an annoying roommate.

Yet, some other things about Tobi were not so easy to get used to.

A month after Tobi became his partner, the pair finally had time to take a week long rest in the Akatsuki headquarters. Deidara had been bent over his work bench, his long, slender fingers meticulously molding a soft piece of clay into a delicate vine with broad, curving leaves and small, sharp thorns. He hummed softly to himself, debating internally about the possibility of getting Itachi to use his Katon jutsu to complete the firing for him after he had finished coloring and glazing the piece. Creating pieces akin to that of Nature's was so different from his usual style of explosiveness, but Deidara welcomed a challenge when it came to art.

Then came the first of many incidents of warm, moist breath skimming his neck while he worked hard at creating the art that he loved more than life.

"Gosh, Deidara sempai, you're really…"

The shock from the gust of warm air streaming down his neckline and the ardently spoken words came so suddenly that Deidara snapped the clay vine between his fingers in surprise. Still, it wasn't long before the surprise of the moment changed to blind rage that his carefully created piece of art was destroyed by his own hands.

When Deidara finally calmed down later, Tobi laid at his feet, struggling to breathe through what was later discovered to be three fractured ribs and a broken nose behind his orange mask. Yet, his new partner still found the strength to finish his incomplete sentence, though his words were interrupted with plentiful wheezes and coughs and wet, bloody splatters.

"…talented. Teach me how to sculpture?"

Unwilling to show anymore surprise for the day, Deidara felt a silver of grudging respect for the bubbly boy rise up in him. In the days that followed, Deidara slowly got used to the feel of Tobi breathing down his neck. Even later on, he would learn to enjoy the sensation of Tobi's warm breath on other parts of his anatomy.

* * *

_Autumn was, well, to quote Keats, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Mother Nature's rainbow colored palette was washed and rinsed, and the colors were replaced with reds and bronzes and gold. She picked up the clay of life, and molded, with great heart and love, each fruit that was borne from the swaying branches in Autumn's breeze. Then before long, all the color would be gone, blended into the monochrome of Winter. Which was why Autumn was Deidara's favorite season, for Mother Nature's masterpiece, though transient in all other seasons, never had a sense of ending and exit quite like Autumn. Autumn marked the end of a mindset, and gave hint to the beauty of change though it was a constant itself._

Deidara stood under the wide boughs of the maple tree, rake in hand, enjoying the offerings of Autumn. He imagined that he could taste the colors around him as the tree shed its golden leaves, hear the sound of fruit in the nearby fruit trees ripening, and feel the scent of Autumn's unique character. This was when he felt most inspired, and he knew that a sleepless night awaited him when he returned to his room, for there was no way he could put off the creation of beauty that the season's muse gifted him with.

In the past, Sasori-danna would give him this time alone, for Sasori-danna was a creature of Summer, when the animals came alive and thrived in the process of natural selection, fighting to stay at the top and to enjoy the sunshine for one more day. Autumn was Deidara's season, and he was allowed to enjoy it in his own way. Deidara would volunteer to rake the leaves around the Akatsuki yard, if only for some peace and quiet to let his muse find him and sustain him through the cold, bitter season that was to come.

But as his ears registered the sound of Tobi's gleeful laughter from behind him, he knew that his peaceful Autumn days had come to an end.

A warm, gloved hand wrapped around his wrist, and Deidara barely had time to release a sigh of resignation and open his eyes before he let go of his rake. Events like this happened often enough around Tobi, since he was the instigator of the abovementioned events. Deidara had concluded earlier on in their partnership that when Tobi had a "moment" like this, it was much safer for him to go with the flow than to fight the masked youth. But was it really an issue of safety, and how did it make it safer for him? Deidara had no answer to that, but there was no way in hell that he was going to admit it was because he enjoyed the result of Tobi's "moments".

So Deidara _let_ himself be dragged by the hand by Tobi, _allowed_ himself to be tugged off balance from his normally nimble feet, and _unwillingly_ tumbled into the pile of leaves that he had painstakingly raked together, from the browns at the base, all the way to the golden leaves that formed the crowning glory of the pile. He watched Tobi laugh as they rolled through the dry, crackling leaves, until their breathlessness caught up with them and they laid on their sides in the destroyed pile, facing each other, Tobi punctuating Deidara's silence with his soft giggles.

"That was fun, wasn't it Deidara sempai?"

Deidara _allowed_ himself a small smile, before he pushed Tobi's mask up such that it settled on the youth's dark hair, revealing a smiling, if somewhat nervous, face with brown eyes, one alert and the other one unmoving, distorted and blind. Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to Tobi's in a chaste kiss.

"Yes it was, un."

* * *

_Winter steals into the world without so much as an announcement. It doesn't come with the loud, crass chirping of the first awakened birds in Spring, or the riot of youth in Summer. It didn't have the sophisticated symphony that Autumn sang to, but comes with just about as much sound as that of a butterfly landing on a soft petal. Everything then goes silent with it, the animals curl up in their dens to slumber the cold days away, and Mother Nature grows lazy in her craft as she left her palette only in shades of monochrome. True, some said that she spent her time crafting the unique design of each snowflake, but being the cynic that he was, Deidara was adamantly against the romantic notion that no two snowflakes were identical. Factory mass produced crap, he would think._

Deidara never created any explosive art, save for on mission, in Winter. This was because the blanket of snow that fell on the land around him muffled sounds, and the explosion was not merely unsatisfying. Deidara felt that it smothered his art. He hated Winter, for it cheapened and lessened his artistic ability and left him uninspired.

But now he had another reason to hate the season. Tobi, being the idiot that he was, had been sick with a cold and a fever since the first fall of snow a week ago. He was now in the room that Deidara shared with him, sleeping off the medication that he had taken like the good, obedient boy that he was, leaving Deidara alone to his arctic thoughts as he sat alone on the floor in front of the fireplace in the Akatsuki den's living room. It was well past midnight now, and those present in the headquarters were either asleep, or in Itachi's case, raiding the freezer for ice cream.

Simply put, no one was near the living room.

Deidara could not sleep, for in Winter, the lack of inspiration and creation left him cranky and insomniac. His body refused to feel tired, while his psyche protested the thought of going to sleep without the prospect of dreaming in realism, cubism or any other form of art. So during the long Winter nights, Deidara stayed wide awake, usually reading or at least doing something relatively productive.

However, all he could concentrate on tonight was the flicker of the flames in front of him. He had tried to read _Ninjutsu for Necromancy_, but after he found himself stuck at the same page for 6 hours, he gave up. If asked, he would vehemently deny that it was his worry over Tobi's persistent illness that resulted in his lack of concentration. His mind was a blank, save for the shades of orange and red in from of him, and the thought to wake Tobi up in 5 hours' time to take his next dose of medicine.

He was aware that he loathed Winter more than ever this year, but unwilling to admit to the very obvious reason as to why. Still he couldn't help but smile when he heard the soft padding of feet down the hallway from his room to the living room, and the subsequent warmth of Tobi's body as the youth, maskless and wrapped up in a thick, downy comforter, curled up on the floor next to where Deidara was sitting and rested his head on Deidara's lap. Tobi squirmed a little, and nuzzled his face into the junction between Deidara's left thigh and body, then gave a little sigh of contentment as he settled into a more comfortable position.

"Deidara sempai's warm," he muttered, voice muffled by Deidara's cotton pajamas. "Tobi loves his…"

Tobi's voice drifted off as sleep took over his senses. Deidara looked at Tobi, and suddenly felt a bolt of inspiration to create. He saw the youth and shyness of Spring, the vibrancy and daringness of Summer, and the coziness and maturity of Autumn, all in the sleeping figure in his lap. The mouth on his hands were starting to chew, straining to work with the familiar texture of clay and to create art in the middle of Winter, something Deidara had never done before. But taking a deep breath, the blonde stilled the movement on his palms. There were more important things to take care of now than art.

Deidara had to take care of his muse.

He slipped one of his arms around Tobi's chest and bent over to plant a soft kiss on his partner's forehead, which was no longer as warm as it was earlier that day. He could not help but give a relieved smile at the warmth bubbling up in him, as he realized that Tobi was going to be just fine. Knowing his partner, the first that that the youth would do when he had fully recovered would be to drag Deidara out into the cold and force him to make snow angels in the yard with him.

An undignified and completely plebeian form of activity.

And with that, Deidara found himself liking Winter just a little bit more.


End file.
